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...Home > Resources > Inclusive Classrooms > Instructor Introduction > Your Experiences with Diversity

Your Experiences with Diversity

Taken verbatim from Your Diversity, the Academic Culture, and Teaching and Learning Styles

You might identify your own attitudes toward diversity by remembering certain pivotal moments in your life. Ask yourself the following questions:

1) Recall the incident in which you first became aware of differences. What was your reaction? Were you the focus of attention or were others? How did that affect how you reacted to the situation?

2) What are the "messages" that you learned about various "minorities" or "majorities" when you were a child? At home? In school? Have your views changed considerably since then? Why or why not?

3) Recall an experience in which your own difference put you in an uncomfortable position vis-a-vis the people directly around you. What was that difference? How did it affect you?

4) How do your memories of differences affect you today? How do they (or might they) affect your teaching?

To explore these issues in greater depth, read either or both of the following works:

Teaching in Racially Diverse College Classrooms (Tips for Teachers) from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University.

Your Diversity, the Academic Culture, and Teaching and Learning Styles
(Chapter 1 from Teaching for Inclusion, Written and published online by the staff of the Center for Teaching and Learning)

 

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